Shrek Sweded - Finished Sweded film

http://youtu.be/jGOT46inpzc

Shrek Sweded - Marketing techniques

For our Sweded film project, we chose to do Shrek. In order to maximise the publicity our film got on the release date, we chose to use the following marketing techniques:

1. We set up a Facebook page allowing us to show updates and behind the scenes of the making of our swede Shrek Sweded Facebook page

2. We also set up a Twitter account to post updates and trivia facts about the film Sweded Shrek Twitter account

3. We made a poster for our sweded that we put up around the school stating when and where people would be able to watch the video

4. We made a teaser trailer filled with bloopers and outtakes to get the shrek lovers in the mood, which we posted to our Facebook page 

DEXTER title sequence re-edit: Evaluation Questions

1. Summarise the conventions of title sequences that were most important to this task
For this task, the most important convention of title sequences was the cast and crew listings. Being given a title-less opening sequence to the TV series 'Dexter', we were asked to design the titles for this clip. We had enough time to include the (fictional) names of the director and the cast, but a conventional title sequence would include more roles, such as the Producer or other key crew members. Things such as the Title and production company's graphics were already part of the sequence.
2. How did your group plan to edit the title sequence? 
Firstly, what my group decided to do was watch through the sequence completely, taking notes and sketching where we thought would be an appropriate place for titles. We then set about taking it in turn to write and design the titles, discussing our choices as did the task.
3. Explain the creative decisions made by your group
The two main creative decisions we made were the type of font we used and the colour of the titles. We went for a red and white colour scheme because the colour scheme matched the Dexter title graphic's colours. Also we used the sans serif font Bauhaus neue all in capitals, as we thought that using a more complex font would draw the attention of the viewer from the scenes behind the text. 
4. How does your re-edit compare to the original?
For our edit, I think that we tried to create difficult titles that were not really needed. Watching the real one and our one side by side you can see that the titles in the real one communicate information to the audience a lot clearer than ours does. However, I do think that the titles in the actual sequence are a little bit too stationary, and the movement of the titles in our sequence adds character to the shot. Lastly, I think the comparison of the placement of titles in each sequence is quite interesting as i think that both have some titles better placed than others for the shots they are in.

Sweded Film Making

Inspired by the film Be Kind Rewind, we were given the task of creating a 'Sweded' film of our choosing. The term 'Sweded' actually comes from the film Be kind rewind itself. In the film, Jerry (Jack Black) accidentally magnetically wipes all of the VCR tapes in the rental store called 'Be Kind Rewind'. Mike (Mos Def) quickly discovers the disaster, and is further pressed when a customer wants to rent Ghostbusters. To prevent them from reporting a problem to Mr. Fletcher, the store owner, Mike comes up with an idea: as the customer has never seen the movie, he proposes to recreate the film using himself and Jerry as the actors and cheap special effects hoping to fool her. Word of mouth spreads of the inadvertently hilarious results of Mike and Jerry's filming, and soon the store is seeing more requests for such movies. Mike and Jerry quickly pass off the movies as being "sweded", insisting the films came from Sweden and thus able to demand long wait times and higher costs for the rental. The term "sweded" has been adopted as a slang term for a cheap spoof remake of any film or film trailer. For our version of a Sweded film, I think the following films would be good to Swede:

• Inception
• Shrek
• Fast and Furious
• Ice Age
• Transformers

Preliminary task - Evaluation

1. Who did you work with and how did you manage the task between you?

For this preliminary task, we were asked to create a short continuity task involving filming and editing a character opening a door, crossing a room and sitting down in a chair opposite another character, with who they exchange a couple of lines of dialogue, and I worked with Yssy and Chrystal. We came across quite a few difficulties because of the size of our group. The first issue we came across was the fact that we had chosen for two of use to be involved in the actual video, leaving only Chrystal to use the camera and film. This meant that we had to spend a lot of time finding ways for all of us to agree on a shot as we couldn't always see the camera feed. Secondly as there was only one person working the camera, we did not have anyone keeping track of takes or shots using the clapper board, but that wasn't too much of an issue.

2. How did you plan your sequence? What processes did you use? What theories did you try to take into account?
To be honest, we didn't plan our sequence to the best of our abilities, although we did structure the it to an extent. We managed to do some general planning, for instance a group discussion took place where we covered things such as the dialogue within the sequence, the shots and their framing and also the floor plan, although we did miss out key factors of the preparation process that brought up issues later on in the task, such as the walkthrough of the shots which meant we had to alter or completely change most of the shots we had already planned, which wasting time in doing so. In the things we did do right however, namely the storyboarding, we managed to take into account various continuity techniques such as the 180º rule, match on action and Shot-reverse-shits which meant that editing the sequence later on was a lot easier.

3. What technology did you use to complete the task, and how did you use it?
There two stages to the task. Firstly the filming of the shots for the sequence and then the editing of the shots we had taken to make the sequence continuous. For the first stage, we used a mini DV sony handheld camera mounted on a tripod to film, along with a shotgun mic attached for improved sound. This was relatively easy to use as all it involved was pressing the record button to start filming and pressing it again the stop. I say relatively easy however because of the checks you had to carry out for sound and tape as they were both external components to the camera.  Apart from that there was nothing different than using a phone really. For the second stage, we used the software Adobe Premiere to edit the shots for the sequence into a continuos narrative. We learnt about marking in and marking out on desired takes of film (essentially clipping them down to size) and also about the two platform editing style used to avoid gaps in the video.

4. What factors did you have to take into account when planning, shooting and editing?
As i mentioned before, we managed to take into account various continuity techniques such as the 180º rule, match on action and shot-reverse-shots when planning our sequence initially. We also tried to use continuous takes which would make the editing process easier later on. This process involved filming the dialogue sequence from one angle only so that it could be trimmed later in Premiere. This technique  meant the dialogue between the two characters would be continuous, and the shot would stay the same throughout. Match on action was important as well, which was the same concept of filming the movement of the character down a hall (for example) from different angles so later on in the editing process, you could switch between angles to make the sequence more interesting to the viewer.

5. How successful was your sequence? Please identify what worked well, and with hindsight, what would you improve or do differently?
I thought our sequence as a whole fitted the brief well, but in our eyes it wasn't really successful as the sequence we had initially planned for. The continuity of the sequence worked well and the shots were fine, the only problem is that the story doesn't make much sense. What we had intended was music to be played over the top of the video, however were then told that couldn't use anything that was not filmed ourselves and so obviously our sequence didn't work as well as we thought it would. Also i think that for a first time doing anything like this, our planning was good although in hindsight i think that i should know exactly when are where i am filming, what position the camera will be in and if i'll be able to comfortably film there, as there were some issues of filming in the cramped office with the equipment we had.

6. What have you learnt from completing the task? Looking ahead, how will this learning be significant when completing the rest of your foundation coursework?
I've learnt a lot from completing this task, and i'll definitely use what i've learnt now in future projects. I think that knowing what i did wrong for this project will help me to make sure it doesn't happen again on others, so things like the organisation and preparation of the shoot in future should be better.